


i'll see you in my dreams

by exley



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 14:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3491036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exley/pseuds/exley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"If two points are destined to touch, the universe will always find a way to make the connection - even when all hope seems to be lost... Across space, across time, among paths we cannot predict - nature always finds a way."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll see you in my dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Based on some crazed meeblings I made over on tumblr. Soulmate!AUs are where it's at.

_"Des yeux qui font baisser les miens_

_un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche_

_Voilà le portrait sans retouche_

_de l'homme auquel j'appartiens."_

 

 

 

Tracy McConnell is eight years old when she first hears of the mate bond.

Even at such a precocious age, she scoffs at the idea, to her parents' twin looks of surprise. _That's a cute story_ , she says, and turns back to her coloring book, concentrating on making the Beast look as menacing as possible, outlining his cape with luxurious blue and purple strokes. (she didn't pick out the coloring book, her parents did. She wanted a _Black Cauldron_ coloring book, but apparently they had never been made, and that was just tragic.)

Her parents had described their first meeting, a story that started out innocently enough (he was a busboy at the café at which she sang the blues, his shift ended just as hers began). Tracy had been following along until a key moment, the moment when her father had first seen her mother.

"The minute I saw her, I was a goner. I knew immediately that she was going to be my wife, and nothing in the world was going to change that fact. It was like...magic."

Tracy doesn't understand. She's almost nine years old, for heaven's sake. Did her parents really not trust her with the story of how they met? She had seen her parents during their everyday lives; there was nothing magical about them. Her mother would make breakfast and set her father's place at the table with care, and they would part ways in the morning with a kiss and smile. They spent the evenings watching TV until they both fell asleep, and Tracy would often catch them like that, matching bunny slippers propped up on the ottoman. They were her parents, not a fairytale prince and princess. They were...normal.

So Tracy colors in her coloring book, tapping her heels together, as her parents gently try to explain the matebond, and how one day it would happen to her too.

She tries not to think about it too much.

 

 

 

Tracy is even less convinced when she is thirteen.

By now she's heard plenty about the matebond; it's a concept that's passed around like an old wives' tale. You couldn't turn on the TV without hearing some fluff piece of two people meeting and becoming tied together at the neck for all time. What Tracy hates about it is that everyone takes it as fact, and there's no proof or truth behind it. Her friends whisper and giggle about it behind their hands, blushing as they peer around corners, as if waiting for a miracle. 

Which they may as well be. Tracy has done her research, and knows that stories of love-at-first-sight were retroactive memories, and that the two mates were merely impressing their current feelings onto a past memory. It was fantasy, nothing more.

Still, her parents (especially her mother) persist. _Every McConnell has bonded with their mate_ , her father likes to say. _You'll know soon enough_. It's beginning to get irritating.

In her research (and trust, she's done plenty) she's also heard of a Korean concept known as the red string of destiny; it's a thread that is at once red and invisible, and connects two lovers by the pinky across any distance. It would make an excellent Disney film (she knows, she's written a spec script to prove it), but it doesn't _feel_ real.

She's curious, though. It's not that she doesn't believe in love; she does. More than words can say. She just doesn't believe it can happen that neatly. And she's pretty peeved that her parents can be so sure about her future. Many cultures had their superstitions; the whole "McConnells always meet their mates" thing is no different.

 

 

 

Tracy doesn't think to be afraid until she is eighteen.

His name is Max, and he grows on her like a daisy. He always says hi every morning when he drops off the mail; he must have figured out that the subscription to ARTNews is hers, as he always places it on top of the pile where she can see it. The way he clicks his tongue should be annoying, but she minds less and less the more she gets to know him. Max has an ease about him; he is not difficult to love.

By now she's spoken to her paternal aunt, who confirms the whole McConnells-always-meet-their-mates thing. _All people bond_ , she had said, _but with McConnells, it's different. It's a guarantee. And it's permanent._ Molly McConnell-Taylor had been married to her husband for thirteen years, and when he died, she was adamant that she'd never meet another like him.  _He was the once-in-a-lifetime kind,_ she had said.  _I'm only glad that I got to know him at all._

Max is kind, and beautiful, and she does love him, and she rejects any theory that says that he isn't the one. What she feels is real, and grows everyday. This is the pinnacle, and she needs no magic to tell her that.

 

 

 

The fear comes full-circle on her twenty-first birthday.

She thinks of her aunt Molly, as she watches numbly as Max's casket is lowered. She thinks of her, alone in her big old house that she and her husband spent months fixing up. She thinks about how lonely, yet peaceful her aunt looks.

Tracy doesn't feel peaceful. She doesn't feel anything. She wishes that she'd never heard of the stupid mate bond, because now, after the fact, she knows it.

Max was the best she was ever going to get, and now he's gone.

She's heard of starter-marriages; first marriages that don't last long, but teach you how to love. People who loved once were sure to love again, and permanently.

But there are the stories. Tales of mate bonds gone wrong. Tales of mates separated by decades, or mates who don't meet until one of them is on their deathbed. She knows Max had to be the one; she had never known love before him. If there ever was magic, it's gone for her now.

She cries for Max, and for herself.

 

 

 

Still, life goes on, as it always must.

Tracy goes back to school, and slowly puts her life back together. She reads several books on classical economics and doesn't look back. Her parents support her every step of the way, and always offer to feed her or help with her tuition (she's got it, thanks, she can juggle a job and financial aid on her own, thank you very much). She's sitting in Econ 305, chatting away with the girl she now knows as Cindy, and idly glances down at the podium.

And sees him.

She never had much reference for what the matebond does, only that her parents spoke of it in glowing terms, and they automatically knew what was going on. Tracy doesn't.

At first she thinks she's been stricken with some kind of heartburn (she knew she shouldn't have eaten that peanut butter and jelly sandwich that morning), and the colors of the room seem to brighten and swim before her, as if she's looking through a haze. Tracy knows she's too young to be having a stroke.

One thing Tracy McConnell is known for, though, is her iron restraint. When she hears the words "Architecture 101" uttered, she springs into action, and runs across campus as fast as her legs can carry her. Once she realizes her mistake (or rather, the professor's mistake), she wants to be annoyed, but it doesn't come. She feels...much lighter, somehow. Taller. Like floating in the ocean on her back, letting the waves buoy her home.

Save for a split-second glimpse, she doesn't see the architecture professor again.

 

 

 

This is crazy. She doesn't believe in these superstitions. So she clamps down the feeling, likening it to some sort of one-time manic episode. After all, she doesn't even _know_ the man, and after Max, she's cool on the idea of love. Her synapses were misfiring that day in Econ class. This is what she's thinking to herself right up until the day she meets Louis.

But still.

In her dreams, it's a whole 'nother story. In her dreams, she always sees this tall dark stranger, and he holds out his hand. When she takes it, she feels whole, and content, like nothing she's ever felt before. Like everything that happened before was okay, and couldn't hurt anymore.

She does the only thing she knows how to do: repress, repress, repress. She's a realistic person, and Louis seems nice. The longer she's with him, the more she thinks, _I am an adult and this is how it's done_. They're playing house. They're moving fast.

In the deepest corners of herself, she wants it to be him. She wants her mate to be Louis. It would put this whole charade at an end forever. This is how it's meant to be. This is her path.

Until he proposes to her and she knows it can't be.

When she asks for Max's permission, she doesn't think about the architecture professor, but she's thinking about all the other people in the world ( _all the other fishes in the sea_ ), and all the possibilities they represent. Maybe Max wasn't her mate. Maybe Louis isn't.

But that's okay.

And as she strums her ukulele and sings to the stars, she finally gives the magic an inch at last. Maybe you could have many true loves, and one of them can be lucky enough to be your soulmate, the one you're with when you rest for the last time. That doesn't make your love worth any more, or any less.

She sleeps well that night.

 

 

 

The wedding gig is eventful, she will admit. She can't hide her surprise and delight at seeing the guy from the drugstore with the bride who tried to tackle her (if she were to believe in destiny, she'd believe in it now). She looks over the crowd as she plucks the strings of her bass, the sea of faces a blur to her from her perch on the stage. If one face is a little more interesting than the others, she doesn't catch it.

 

 

 

In last few moments before the train barrels down the tracks, she's lost in thought.

When she met Max, she had no idea what to expect. She had no preconceived notions, no ulterior motives. She had an open mind and an open heart, and that was all that mattered.

She stands under her umbrella (like an old friend, it found its way back to her) and she waits, and lets the dam break, and lets her mind and heart soar.

_McConnells always meet their mates,_ her father's and aunt's voices, as one, remind her. A warning, and a promise.

She feels a tap on her shoulder, and lets out the breath she didn't know she was holding. 

 

 

 

The first thing to cross her mind, once the puzzle pieces finally fit together, is " _Eh. What the hell_."

The second ( _funny how sometimes you just find things_ ), is " _At last. At last_."


End file.
